ARTICLES ABOUT BULLETS BY DATE - PAGE 5

RAHFEK and Rashawn Dennis' older sister, Zykia Sanders, 22, was their confidante and role model. But early Saturday morning, police say, a thug violently ripped the boys' sister away from them, when a stray bullet not meant for Sanders tore through the young woman's back as she stood outside the West Park Apartments, on Busti Street near Holden, in Powelton. The woman, who relatives said was about to graduate with a bachelor's degree in business administration, became the city's 295th homicide victim of 2012 when she died of her wounds about 2:30 a.m. at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

A 22-year-old woman died in West Philadelphia Saturday morning when she was shot in the back by a bullet not intended for her. Zykia Sanders, from the 300 block of West Berkley Street in Germantown, was not the intended target of the gunfire, according to information provided by Officer Tanya Little, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Police Department. Police arrived at the 4400 block of Holden Street near the Powelton section of the city around 2:18 a.m. They found Sanders on the ground, unresponsive, with a gunshot wound to the back.

A 19-year-old woman was shot once in the head on Aberdeen Street in Wynnefield Heights about 9 p.m. Tuesday, police said. Police said she was not the intended victim. She was pronounced dead at the scene. No further details were available Tuesday night. - Melissa Dribben

Friends and relatives of 19-year-old Sherita Hamilton knew her as a quiet and calm presence, the kind of young woman who never caused trouble or even raised her voice. Hamilton lived on North Wanamaker Street in Overbrook, but often came to babysit her many young cousins who lived in two homes in the 1700 block of North Aberdeen Street in Wynnefield Heights, about a mile away. Hamilton, a nursing student, had endured the death of her mother and grandparents as a child, so family was important to her, said her aunt Adrienne Hamilton.

Friends and relatives of 19-year-old Sherita Hamilton knew her as a quiet and calm presence, the kind of young woman who never caused trouble or even raised her voice. Hamilton lived on North Wanamaker Street in Overbrook, but often came to babysit her many young cousins who lived in two homes in the 1700 block of North Aberdeen Street in Wynnefield Heights, about a mile away. Hamilton, a nursing student, had endured the death of her mother and grandparents as a child, so family was important to her, said her aunt Adrienne Hamilton.

Maurice Bertrand's football physique likely saved his life when he was shot five times on a blistering summer day last year in Camden. When he arrived at Cooper University Hospital, "first thing they said was, 'This guy is still alive?' " Bertrand recalled recently at Lincoln University in Chester County, where he has resumed the sport many thought he'd never play again. Doctors, including Robert Ostrum, the surgeon who helped save former New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine after a serious auto accident, rushed to tend to Bertrand's injuries: High-caliber bullets had broken Bertrand's right thigh bone into 10 or 15 pieces, gone through his left ankle, and struck his back; one hit his left biceps so hard it went through his shoulder and into his eye. Bertrand's large body - 6-foot-2 and 280 pounds - helped stop the bullets from puncturing vital organs.

A WILD crime spree in Frankford early Friday morning culminated with a 61-year-old woman sleeping in her bed taking a stray bullet to the head. A bullet meant for the victim of a robbery on Charles Street near Bridge just before 2 a.m. tore through the siding of a house and struck a woman in the head as she slept in a second-floor bedroom, Chief Inspector Scott Small said. When cops responded to the block, they discovered that the bullet - which had been fired at a 28-year-old woman when she was held up by two men - had somehow torn through siding beneath a window, drywall, a dresser in the older woman's room and her mattress before striking her, Small said.

BEIJING - With its sparkling domed skylight, polished granite floor tiles, grand piano, and string of retail outlets such as Timberland and Nautica, the Beijing South Railway Station could compete with the world's finest for modernity and cleanliness. It was here in December that we boarded China's new high-speed bullet train that whisked us off to Shanghai, more than 800 miles to the south, in just five hours. For efficiency and comfort at a relatively low price ($185 round-trip for second-class seats that were nicer than those on Amtrak's Acela)

OAK CREEK, Wis. - They removed the bloodstained carpeting, repaired shattered windows, and painted over gunfire-scarred walls. But Sikh Temple of Wisconsin members left a single bullet hole to mark the memory of a white supremacist's deadly rampage. As thousands Friday mourned the six victims gunned down before a prayer service, the temple's members worked late the previous night to remove all but the one trace of the shooting. The waist-high bullet hole in a door jamb near the main prayer room was left as a memorial to the slain worshipers.

When John Adams traveled between Boston and Philadelphia in 1776, it took him two weeks. On Amtrak's Acela today, the trip is about five hours. But sometimes, the train seems as frustratingly slow as Adams' horse. Poking through North Philadelphia, lumbering out of New York City, wallowing through Bridgeport, America's high-speed rail is anything but. Compared with its cousins in Europe and Asia, Amtrak's showcase service is heavy and slow, less a bullet train than a cannonball on wheels.